 Why don't we turn her over here? Oh, okay, sure, I'm gonna have to get some wearers out of the way. That is so cute. Thanks, Trevor. Oh, here I go. Thank you. Okay. More hair. Thank you. It's just the result. So, all of them, one more or something. Couple of wearers. Okay, we'll cover this. Okay. Yep. Can you show me your? I will. I'm gonna get my hair done. Good, good, good. I'm gonna get my hair done. I think. Oh, here. I'm gonna get my hair done. Oh, yeah. I'm gonna get my hair done. Okay, so, we'll cover this. Okay, so, we'll cover this. Okay. All right, well, welcome. So, just kind of didn't hear what you were saying. Diana, how are you? How are you? Good, good. If you could maybe just be me and figure out what to expect. I'm gonna have to work with you. Sure. I'm gonna have to work with you. Yeah. I'm gonna have to work with you. Yeah. Good morning. Welcome to the First Unitarian Society of Madison. We are a community where curious seekers gather to explore spiritual, ethical, and social issues in an accepting and nurturing environment. UU support the freedom of conscience of each individual as together we work to be a force for good in the world. My name is Karen Rose Gredler, and on behalf of the entire congregation, I offer a special welcome to visitors and newcomers. As a welcoming congregation, we celebrate the presence of all among us. We sincerely hope our service will spark your mind, touch your heart, and enrich your spirit. This is a great time to silence cell phones or anything else that's making noise and take a few moments to become fully present with ourselves and one another during this time together. Good morning. We're gonna sing together hymn number 188 in your gray hymnal. Come, come, whoever you are. We'll sing it two times through in unison as a group and then two times through again as around. This will be group one to my left. This will be group two to my right. If you don't like the group to which you've been assigned, you should feel free to revolt in a musical and gentle manner. Let's rise. Here we go. Come, come, whoever you are. Wanderer, worshipper, lover of leaving. Ours is no caravan of despair. Come yet again, come. One more time like that please. Come, come, whoever you are. Wanderer, worshipper, lover of leaving. Ours is no caravan of despair. Come yet again, come. Group one, come. Group two, please. Come. Let's do that again. One more time. This is no caravan. Please remain standing for our opening words and the lighting of our chalice. Come, come, whoever you are. With your hurts, your imperfections, your places that feel raw and exposed. Come, come, whoever you are. With your strengths, the world shutters to hold. With your wild imaginings of a better world. With your hopes that it seems no one wants to hear. We will make a place for you. We will build a home together. Ours is no caravan of despair. Come yet again, come. And if you will join together now in the words of affirmation as we light our chalice, all that we have ever loved and all that we have ever been stands with us on the brink of all that we aspire to create. A deeper peace, a larger love, a more embracing hope, a deeper joy in this life we share. And if you will take a moment now to turn and greet those around you. Fight anyone who would like to come forward for our story to come on up. Do you? That's all right. You're great. Good morning. What's that, babe? That is the best. All right. Hi, everybody. Caleb, hey. We're missing one. Hey, Lillian. Everybody this morning of my favorite stories is the three little pigs. Have you ever heard the three little pigs? Story of the three little pigs. How does it work? Yeah. You got it. So three pigs, one big bad wolf, right? Uh-huh. Right. Depending on which version you read, right? There's all these clever ways. There's an apple field in your version. An apple tree or an orchard place, something like that. There's a fair, which version are you guys reading? This is awesome. So what I love about the three little pigs, I have quite a few. I even have one where the three little pigs are architects and one of the pigs is Frank Lloyd Wright. Maybe my personal favorite. I have one that's the three wolves and the big bad pig. I don't like it because the pig has dynamite and stuff. So it gets a little crazy. Yeah. Yes, you've got it. So today what we're going to be talking about is sometimes we think that we know everything there is to know about a story, right? And what I love about the three little pigs is there are so many different ways to think about it. We've got one that involves an apple orchard. We have one where Frank Lloyd Wright is a pig. I mean, there are just a lot of versions. Today, we're going to look at the true story of the three little pigs from somebody else's point of view. The wolf. All right. Everybody knows the story of the three little pigs or at least they do, but I'll let you in on a little secret. Nobody knows the real story because nobody has ever heard my side of the story. I'm the wolf, Alexander T. Wolf. You can call me Al. I don't know how this whole big bad wolf thing got started, but it's all wrong. Maybe it's because of our diet. Hey, it's not my fault wolves eat cute little animals like bunnies and sheeps and pigs. That's just the way we are. If cheeseburgers were cute, folks would probably think you were big and bad, too. But like I was saying, this whole big bad thing is wrong. The real story is about a sneeze and a cup of sugar. This is the real story. Way back in once upon a time-time, I was making a birthday cake for my dear old granny. I had a terrible sneezing cold. I ran out of sugar. So I walked down the street to ask my neighbor for a cup of sugar. Now this neighbor was a pig. He wasn't too bright. He had built his whole house out of straw. Can you believe it? I mean, who in his right mind would build a house of straw? So of course the minute I knocked on the door, it fell right in. I didn't want to just walk into someone else's house. So I called little pig, little pig, are you in? No answer. I was just about to go home without the cup of sugar for my dear old granny's birthday cake. That's when my nose started to itch. I felt a sneeze coming on. Well, I huffed, and I snuffed, and I sneezed a great sneeze. Uh-oh. And you know what? That whole darn straw house fell down. And right in the middle of the pile of straw was the first little pig. That is a doornail. He'd been home the whole time. It seemed like a shame to leave a perfectly good ham dinner lying there in the straw. So I ate it up. Think of it as a big cheeseburger just lying there. I was feeling a little better, but I still didn't have my cup of sugar. So I went to the next neighbor's house. This neighbor was the first little pig's brother. He was a little smarter, but not much. He built his house of sticks. I rang the bell on the stick house. Nobody answered. I called Mr. Pig. Mr. Pig, are you in? He yelled back, go away wolf, can't come in. I am shaving the hairs on my chinny chin chin. I had just grabbed the doorknob when I felt another sneeze coming on. I huffed, and I snuffed, and I tried to cover my mouth, but I sneezed a great sneeze. And you're not going to believe it. But this guy's house fell down just like his brother's. When the dust cleared, there was the second little pig. Dead is a doornail. Wolf's honor. Now you know food will spoil if you just leave it out in the open. So I did the only thing there was to do. I had dinner again. Think of it as a second helping. I was getting awfully full, but my cold was feeling a little better, and I still didn't have that cup of sugar for my dear old granny. So I went to the next house. This guy was the first and second pig's brother. He must have been the brains of the family because he built his house out of bricks. I knocked on the brick house. No answer. I called Mr. Pig. Mr. Pig, are you in? And do you know what that rude little porker answered? Get out of here, wolf. Don't bother me again. Talk about impolite. He probably had a whole sack full of sugar, and he wouldn't give me even one little cup for my dear sweet old granny's birthday cake. What a pig. I was just about to go home and maybe make a nice birthday card instead of a cake. When I felt my cold coming on, I hoffed and I snuffed and I sneezed once again. Then that third little pig yelled, and your old granny can go sit on a pin. Now I'm usually a pretty calm fellow. But when somebody talks about my granny like that, I go a little crazy. When the cops drove up, of course I was trying to break down the pig's door, and the whole time I was huffing and puffing and sneezing and making a real scene. The rest, as they say, is history. The news reporters found out about the two pigs I had for dinner. They figured a sick guy going to borrow a cup of sugar wasn't very exciting. So they jazzed up the story with all that huff and puff and blow your house down, and they made me the big bad wolf. That's it. That's the real story. I was framed. But maybe you could loan me a cup of sugar. What do you think of that now? What do you think of that side of the story? I think he's old. You think what? I think he's old. You think he's old? You think he's been in there for a while now? Yeah. Yeah. The pigs wouldn't let him have a cup of sugar. If they had just let him have that cup of sugar, right? Well, all of this kind of silliness to say, sometimes when we think we know all there is to know about a story, there may always be another way to look at it. So thank you guys for listening. We are going to rise in all the ways we do, and we're going to sing you out to your classes, and we hope you have a great time. Him number 1008, please rise as you are able and body your spirit. Come in each of us, every color, every creed and kind and we see our faces in each other's eyes. Then our heart is in a holy place. When our heart is in a holy place. When our heart is in a holy place. We are blessed with love and amazing grace when our heart is in a holy place. When we tell our story from deep inside and we listen with a loving mind and we hear our voices in each other's words when our heart is in a holy place. When our heart is in a holy place. We are blessed with love and amazing grace when our heart is in a holy place. When we share the silence of sacred space and the God of our heart stirs within and we feel the power of each other's faith. Heart is in a holy place. One more time. When our heart is in a holy place. When our heart is in a holy place. We are blessed with love and amazing grace when our heart is in a holy place. When our heart is in a holy place. Please be seated. Our reading today in ancient tale. Once there was a monastery that had fallen on hard times. It was once part of a great order which as a result of religious persecution had lost all its branches. It was decimated to the extent that there were only five monks left in the mother house. The abbot and four others, all of whom were over 70. Clearly it was a dying order. Deep in the woods surrounding the monastery was a little hut that the rabbi from a nearby town occasionally used for a hermitage. One day it occurred to the abbot to visit the hermitage to see if the rabbi could offer any advice that might save the monastery. The rabbi welcomed the abbot and commiserated. I know how it is, he said. The spirit has gone out of people. Almost no one comes to the synagogue anymore. So the old rabbi and the old abbot wept together and they read parts of the Torah and they spoke quietly of deep things. The time came when the abbot had to leave. They embraced. The abbot said it has been wonderful being with you. But I have failed in my purpose for coming. Have you no piece of advice that might save the monastery? No, I am sorry, the rabbi responded. I have no advice to give. The only thing I can tell you is that the Messiah is one of you. When the other monks heard the rabbi's words, they wondered what possible significance they might have. The Messiah is one of us. One of us here at the monastery? Do you suppose he meant the abbot? Of course it must be the abbot who has been our leader for so long. On the other hand, he might have meant Brother Thomas who was undoubtedly a holy man. Certainly he couldn't have meant Brother Elrod. He is so crotchety. But then Elrod is very wise. Surely he couldn't have meant Brother Philip. He's much too passive. But then, magically, he is always there when you need him. Of course he didn't mean me yet. Wait, supposing he did. Oh, Lord, not me. I couldn't mean that much, could I? As they contemplated in this manner, the old monks began to treat each other with extraordinary respect. On the off chance that one of them might be the Messiah. And on the off chance that each monk himself might be the Messiah, they began to treat themselves with extraordinary respect. Because the forest in which it was situated was beautiful. People occasionally came to visit the monastery, to picnic or to wander the old paths, most of which led to the dilapidated chapel. They sensed the aura of extraordinary respect that surrounded the five old monks, permeating the atmosphere. They began to come more frequently, bringing their friends and their friends, brought friends. Some of the younger men who came to visit began to engage in conversation with the monks. After a while, one asked if he might join. Then another, and another. Within a few years, the monastery became once again a thriving order. And thanks to the rabbi's gift, a vibrant authentic community of light and love for the whole realm. Thank you, Trevor. It's always wonderful to have you here with us. It is said that a man once came across three masons who were working at chipping chunks of granite from large blocks. The first seemed unhappy at his job, chipping away and frequently looking at his watch. The man asked what it was that he was doing. The first mason responded rather curtly, I am hammering this rock, and I can't wait till I get to go home. A second mason seemingly more interested in his work was hammering diligently, and when asked what it was that he was doing, answered, well, I'm molding this block of rock so that it can be used with others to construct a wall. It's not bad work, but I'll sure be glad when it's done. A third mason was hammering at his block fervently, taking time to stand back and admire his work. He chipped off small pieces until he was satisfied that it was the best that he could do. When he was questioned about his work, he stopped, gazed skyward and proudly proclaimed, I am building a cathedral. Three men all doing the same job but making very different meaning out of their situation. Our lives are shaped by the stories we tell. As we look at our own lives and how we spend our days, do we look at them and say we are hammering rocks or are we shaping a cathedral? The stories we tell about ourselves individually and collectively matter. How do we tell the fullest story we can of who we are? How do we leave room for new stories to be added? How do we allow others to come into the fullness of their stories as well? We all have stories. We tell about ourselves, and oftentimes our stories are full of those moments when we believed we failed, all the things we didn't do, the promises we didn't keep. These stories do not leave room for much possibility and many times do not allow room for hope or growth or new learning. They are stories that cut us off from the fullness of life and potential. The research psychologist Tim Wilson, who looks at narrative therapy, tells us that good stories are the ones that give us a sense of purpose. We feel like we are working toward something and that we are making progress toward it. It helps us find meaning in our experience. A good story is one that helps us make sense out of life. Our lives and our pathways, he said, are not fixed in stone. Instead, they are shaped by story. The ways in which we understand and share the stories of our lives makes all the difference. If we tell stories that emphasize only desolation, then we become weaker. If we tell our stories in ways that make us stronger, we can soothe our losses and ease our sorrows. Learning how to re-envision the stories we tell about ourselves can make an enormous difference in the way we live our lives. Now, since the age of seven, I have carried a story that was given to me by someone else. It was given to me by Sister John of the Cross, my first grade teacher. I have very few memories of childhood, and, unfortunately, it is one such as this that stick with me. Now, on this fine day, we were coloring some picture of some sort, and I colored my whole picture blue. My best friend at the time, Joey Naito, had pulled out his box of Crayolas and he was going to town. He had every color from that box on his page. So Sister John of the Cross pulls the two of us up to the front of the room with our pictures to talk to us about creativity. She praised Joey's multi-colored creation as a thing of beauty, and mine was the bad example. The only time she talked about it was as the thing not to do, and pointed out that blue wasn't a very good color anyway. For years and years, I carried her story as my story. I was not creative, I didn't know much about color, and art and beauty were a thing best left to others. Now, narrative therapists would call this story a thin story. Thin stories are those that don't seem to have much detail or complexity and are often imposed on us by others. Parents, teachers, those in authority. Because of that authority, we accept the story without question. Thick stories, on the other hand, are built from the real evidence of life. They are rich with detail, exploring our inner motives and the outward forces that may have made us act the way we did. In narrative therapy, we are asked to examine the stories we tell about ourselves, to create alternative stories to our thin stories, to thicken them, searching for nuance and complexity, adding in richness and detail. So there are the stories that we tell about ourselves, and then there are the stories that we tell about others. Thin stories make for thin relationships. In a wonderful book called The Art of Possibility, Benjamin Zander gives us this case in point, a letter that he received from a man named John Imhoff. And he writes, my dear Benjamin Zander, you have just completed a presentation to the leadership of the North Shore Long Island Jewish Health System. I should be immediately returning to my job, but not without first sitting down and briefly telling you of how you affected me. I am the man who approached you and told you of my emotional reunion with my father through your presentation. He was Swiss German, and throughout my adult life I have struggled to explain to myself why in the 25 years that he was with me he could never even once say, I love you. Oh, we did many things as a family, I suppose his teachings in the form of admonishments have always remained with me, though softened when I became a father myself. You told us to reflect on someone no longer in our lives, as you played a piece by Chopin. And I thought about my father and this question that I could never really answer. And the story that I had told myself because of it. I am unlovable because my father never loved me. And then as if delivered by a bolt of lightning I recalled an incident that occurred between us at least 45 years ago. I was an asthmatic child, and on so many evenings I could not run to the door to say hello to my father. I would instead remain upstairs bedridden, gasping for every breath, waiting for him to come upstairs and say hello and maybe just once say I love you. And then as I listened to your music the memory came back of an evening all those years ago when I was again sick and he came upstairs. But this evening was different. He sat next to me on my bed and as I was sitting upright and struggling for the next breath he began gently stroking my hair for a period of time that I wished would have lasted an eternity. Tears came to my eyes and I knew that while he could not say those words they were expressed even more poignantly in the gentle stroking of a little boy's hair by his father's powerful hands. I recall that as he sat with me my asthma attack subsided. I had completely forgotten that incident. I must have buried it in my own desire to keep my father at a distance to prove my story that I was unlovable that he was cold and only cared about work I needed to keep that story true and solid. But it's not so. My father showed me love in so many ways. If we can only examine and re-examine the stories we tell we can open ourselves to the possibility that what we seek may be in front of us all the time. Thank you, John Imhoff. These thin stories that we tell not only shut us off from the possibilities awaiting us but they close down the possibilities that are waiting between us. Now another way to look at this comes from a TED talk that's called The Danger of a Single Story in which the Nigerian writer Chimamande and Goze Adiche warns of the dangers of carrying these thin stories. She calls them the single story. She says the single story is what you get when you compress all the complex stories of individuals or groups of individuals to a single oversimplified narrative. Told enough times these stories get internalized and we forget that they are merely stories. They can be stories given to us by others like the story given to me by Sister John of the Cross when someone else compresses the complexity of who you are into one story that you then carry throughout your life. She offers this example when she inadvertently bought into the single story of another. She said I come from a conventional middle-class Nigerian family. My father was a professor, my mother was an administrator and so we had as was the norm live in domestic help who would often come from the nearby rural villages. So the year I turned eight we got a new house boy whose name was Fide. The only thing my mother told us about him was that his family was very poor. My mother sent yams and rice and our old clothes to his family and when I didn't finish my dinner my mother would say finish your food don't you know people like Fide's family have nothing. So I only felt enormous pity for Fide's family. Then one Saturday we went to his village to visit and his mother showed us a beautifully patterned basket made of dyed raffia that his brother had made. I was startled. It had not occurred to me that anybody in his family could actually make something. All I had heard about them was how poor they were so that it had become impossible for me to see them as anything else but poor. Poverty was my single story of them. We are not a single story but a rich combination of multiple stories that create the tapestries of our lives. Adice said what if my mother told me that Fide's family was very poor and very hardworking extremely creative makers of beauty. The process of creating the stories of our lives is a process of invention. We get to create the ones that bring us hope and meaning. Reject the ones that hold us back or harm us and when we realize these stories of ourselves are in fact stories, we can change them, adapt them, add to them, make them more complex. When we create thick stories for ourselves we are recognizing all that we bring and we can find freedom and new life in these stories for ourselves and then we can help others find freedom as well. When we recognize that we are stories that are complex and dynamic, that we are each multi-story, then we are less likely to step into the trap of creating a thin, single story of another. Years later when Adice left Nigeria for the United States to attend college she recalled this story of Fide and his family. When she met her first roommate who was quite shocked by her. Her roommate asked where had she learned English so well and was surprised to learn that English is the official language of Nigeria. She asked if she could listen to Adice's tribal music and was greatly disappointed when Adice pulled out a tape of Mariah Carey. She assumed that she didn't know how to use a stove. Her roommate had a single story written of her before she ever arrived. A story that was kind of a patronizing, well-meaning pity. Her single story of the continent of Africa was one of catastrophe. One of a people who couldn't do anything for themselves, who needed to be saved by a foreigner. How do you do this, Adice asked? How do you create a single story? You show a people as only one thing over and over and over again and they become that story. You tell a person that they are only one thing over and over and over again and they become that story. Our culture can also tell thin stories that do not reflect the complexities of our world. One of the most common ones is that we are a land of equal opportunity that anyone can pull themselves up from their bootstraps if they're only willing to work hard enough. The reality, of course, is that our starting conditions dramatically impact our chances of success in life. Growing up in poverty means you are far less likely to become wealthy than those born in the middle class, let alone those born into wealth and privilege. We love to lift up those stories of the person who was the poorest of the poor who ended up with great wealth and we use those thin stories to show how this must be true. But the individual examples run counter to the broader reality. Income inequality and social mobility are both decreasing in our country and little is being done to shift the tide. Perhaps we need to rewrite the story because the stories we tell affect our own lives and what we believe is possible for us. They affect our relationships and what we believe is possible between and among us. And they affect our wider world and whether we believe that justice and freedom and peace are really available for all of us. Stories matter. They have been used to dispossess and malign and they can also be used to empower and to humanize. Stories can break hearts and souls and they can be used to repair and to heal. So may we be willing to consider and reconsider the stories we tell about ourselves, one another, our community and our world. Let us tell thick stories, rich in hope and possibility and in the telling may we begin to make them true. Generosity is one of those spiritual qualities that we aspire to and one of the practices that we nurture in this community. With our offering each week, we give of our resources to support the work of this community and also the work of our outreach offering recipient this week, the Greater Madison Urban League. You can find out more about their good work in the red floors and we thank you for your generosity. Thank you, Trevor. All for all of your generous gifts. We also want to recognize those people who helped to make this service possible with their gifts of service. Our greeters were Claire Box and Joyce Carey. At our welcome table out in the closure, we have Mary Bergen. The rushers were Michael Lossy, Mary Savage and Marty Hollis. Hospitality, those people who fix our coffee and lemon water are Terry Felton and Lois Evenson this morning. Our lay minister is Ann Smiley and our staff are handling the sound if anyone wants to become a volunteer sound operator. We could certainly use you. There will be a tour of the facilities immediately following this service and if you're interested, please meet John Powell up on this side of the auditorium by the big windows and he will be happy to give a tour. There are a couple of announcements we'd like to call your attention to especially. There are lots of announcements in the red floors but two particular ones. This is the final week for guests at your table collections. So please remember to return your guest at your table gifts in support of the UU service committee and there is a table outside where you can do that if you've brought your money today. I'd also like to mention a small group ministry and your opportunity to learn more about it this weekend right here out in the commons following the service members of our various groups will be available to answer questions and share information. So please check that out if you're interested in participating in any of the small groups and check out everything in the red floors because there's lots of good information in there. Thank you. We join together each week. A community who gathers with joys and sorrows written on our hearts. In this place we love and are loved, we give and receive in return. This week we share the joy of Anne Smiley who wishes a happy birthday to her son Will who is in Delhi today with his in-laws. He and his wife Medavi will also celebrate their second wedding anniversary there the day after tomorrow. We hold Norma Swanson, the mother of Janet Swanson in our hearts today. Norma passed away last Sunday. We're also thinking of Ron Valenza, the son of Jeanine Nussbaum who was in his final days at a grace hospice. And we remember Lee Weiss, a very generous and loving woman whose memorial service was here on Friday evening and our flowers today are a gift from her chalice group in her memory. We hold all those joys and sorrows too tender to share that live in the fullness of our hearts. May we remember that we are part of the web of life. May we be grateful for this miracle of life we share and the hope that gives us the power to care, to remember and to love. And I now invite you to rise in all the ways we do for our closing hymn, number 151. I wish I knew how it would feel to be free I wish I could break all these chains holding me I wish I could say all the things I could say Say I'm loud, say I'm clear for the whole world to hear Say I'm loud, say I'm clear for the whole world to hear I wish I could share all the love in my heart bars that still keep us apart I wish you could know what it means to be me Then you'd see and agree everyone should be free Then you'd see and agree everyone should be free I wish I could give all I'm longing to give I wish I could live like I'm long I wish I could do all the things I can do Though I'm way I'd be starting anew Though I'm word do I'd be starting anew I wish I could be like a bird in the sky How sweet it would be if I found I could fly I'd soar to the sun and look down at the sea Then I'd sing cause I'd know how it feels to be free Then I'd sing cause I'd know how it feels to be free We extinguish this chalice remembering there is within each of our hearts a most glorious light Go forth and let it spark help you understand what troubles both you and others Go forth and let its light of reason be a guide in your decisions Go forth and bring its ray of hope to those in need of help in both body and spirit that they may find healing Go forth and fan the flames of passion to help heal our world Go forth and spread the warm glow of love pushing back the darkness of the world Go forth and share your glorious light Blessed be go in peace and please be seated for the postlude